CHARLOTTE: Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump launched campaign blitzes Thursday with dramatically different approaches to attracting swing-state voters who will decide the presidential contest.
In North Carolina, Democratic nominee Harris used rallies in Charlotte and Greensboro to tout endorsements from Republicans who have crossed the aisle to back her. She also promised to protect access to health care and abortion, while delighting her partisan crowds with celebrations of her debate performance Tuesday, taking digs at Trump and cheerleading for her campaign and the country.
“We’re having a good time, aren’t we?” Harris declared, smiling as her boisterous crowd chanted: “USA! USA! USA!”
In the border state of Arizona, the Republican Trump pitched a tax exemption on all overtime wages, adding it to his previous proposals to not tax tip s or Social Security income. But the former president squeezed those proposals, along with a nonspecific pledge to lower housing costs, into a stemwinding speech marked by his most incendiary rhetoric on immigration and immigrants themselves, name-calling of Harris and others, and a dark, exaggerated portrait of a nation Trump insisted is in a freefall only he can reverse.
“I was angry at the debate,” Trump said, mocking commentators’ description of his performance Tuesday. “And, yes, I am angry,” he said, because “everything is terrible” since Harris and President Joe Biden are “destroying our country.” Upon his repeated use of the word “angry,” Trump’s crowd in Tucson answered with its own “USA! USA! USA!” chants.
The competing visions and narratives underscored the starkly different choices faced by voters in the battleground states that will decide the outcome. Harris is casting a wide net, depending on Democrats’ diverse coalition and hoping to add moderate and even conservative Republicans repelled by the former president. Trump, while seeking a broad working-class coalition with his tax ideas, is digging in on arguments about the country — and his political opponents — that are aimed most squarely at his most strident supporters.
That could become a consistent frame for the closing stretch of the campaign after Trump shut the door on another debate. That potentially could have been another seminal moment during a year that already has boomeranged around milestones like Trump’s criminal conviction by a New York jury, Trump surviving an assassination attempt, Biden ending his reelection bid amid questions about his age, and Harris consolidating Democratic support to become the first woman of color to lead a major-party ticket.
“There will be no third debate,” Trump said Thursday, counting his June matchup against Biden in the total, and insisting he had won his lone encounter with Harris on Tuesday in Philadelphia.
The post-debate blitz reflected the narrow path to 270 Electoral College votes for both candidates, with the campaign already having become concentrated on seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Harris’ itinerary Thursday put her in a state Trump won twice, but his margin of 1.3 percentage points in 2020 was his closest statewide victory. Arizona, meanwhile, was one of Trump’s narrowest losses four years ago. He won the state in 2016.
In North Carolina, Harris took her own post-debate victory lap, and her campaign already has cut key moments of the debate into ads. But Harris warned against overconfidence, calling herself an underdog and making plain the stakes.
“This is not 2016 or 2020,” she said in Charlotte. “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.”
She touted endorsements from Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, both of whom have deemed Trump a fundamental threat to American values and democracy.
“Democrats, Republicans and independents are supporting our campaign,” Harris said in Charlotte, praising the Cheneys and like-minded Republicans as citizens who recognize a need to “put country above party and defend our Constitution.”
Yet she also made a full-throated defense of the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law commonly called “Obamacare” and passed over near-unanimous Republican opposition. She mocked Trump, who has spent years promising to scrap the law but said at their debate that he still has no specific replacement plan.
“He said, ‘concepts of a plan,’” Harris said. “Concepts. Concepts. No actual plan. Concepts. ... Forty-five million Americans are insured through the Affordable Care Act. And he’s going to end it based on a concept.”
She saddled Trump again with the Supreme Court’s decision to end a woman’s federal right to abortion, paving the way for Republican-led states to severely restrict and in some cases effectively ban the procedure.
“Women are being refused care during miscarriages. Some are only being treated when they develop sepsis,” Harris said of states with the harshest restrictions.
The vice president added her usual broadsides against Project 2025, a 900-page policy agenda written by conservatives for a second Trump administration. Trump has distanced himself from the document, though there is a notable overlap between it and his policies — and, for that matter, some of the policy aims of Republicans like the Cheneys.
Harris’ approach in Charlotte and Greensboro tracked perhaps her widest path to victory: exciting and organizing the diverse Democratic base, especially younger generations, nonwhite voters and women, while convincing moderate Republicans who dislike Trump that they should be comfortable with her in the Oval Office, some policy disagreements notwithstanding. That’s the same formula Biden used in defeating Trump four years ago, flipping traditionally GOP-leaning states like Arizona and Georgia and narrowing the gap in North Carolina.
Trump, meanwhile, appears to bet that his path back to the White House depends mostly on his core supporters, plus enough new support from working- and middle-class voters drawn to his promises of tax breaks.
A raucous crowd cheered his new pitch to end taxes on overtime wages. In a state where rising housing prices has been an acute issue since the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump’s audience exulted in his pledge to reduce housing construction costs by “30 to 50 percent” — a staggering drop that he did not detail beyond pledging to cut regulations and ban mortgages “for illegal aliens.”
“We are going to bring back the American dream bigger, better and stronger than ever before,” Trump said, beaming.
But he reserved most of 75 minutes at the podium for, in his words, being “angry.” Mostly about an influx of migrants across the US Southern border, but also about the ABC debate moderators he said were unfair in the debate he insisted he won. He singled out Linsey Davis, calling her “nasty” — the same word he would use to describe his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump ticked through many of his usual immigration bromides, arguing that migrants in the US illegally have “taken over” US cities and suburbs. He again alluded to the debunked claims — fueled by right-wing actors on social media — that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating domesticated pets and fowl in public parks. Trump invoked the approval of Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban, and he elicited roars when he promised “largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”
And the former president repeatedly mispronounced Harris’ first name, while insisting she is both a Marxist and a fascist — political ideologies that rest on opposite ends of the left-right political spectrum.
In swing states, Harris touts Republican endorsements while Trump leans into incendiary rhetoric
https://arab.news/zpa4u
In swing states, Harris touts Republican endorsements while Trump leans into incendiary rhetoric
UK tribunal rules academic’s anti-Zionism beliefs are protected under law
LONDON: An employment tribunal in the UK has ruled that an academic’s anti-Zionism should be protected under anti-discrimination laws as a “philosophical belief,” concluding that his views were “worthy of respect in a democratic society.”
The judgment came after Prof. David Miller’s dismissal from the University of Bristol in 2021, where he taught political sociology, for alleged antisemitic remarks in which he argued Zionism was inherently “racist, imperialist, and colonial,” leading to apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
The tribunal, which first ruled in February that Miller had been unfairly discriminated against, has now published a 120-page judgment outlining its decision, acknowledging the divisive nature and controversy of his comments but concluding that his beliefs were genuinely held and protected.
Judge Rohan Pirani said: “Although many would vehemently and cogently disagree with (Miller)’s analysis of politics and history, others have the same or similar beliefs. We find that he has established that (the criteria) have been met and that his belief amounted to a philosophical belief.”
The tribunal also recognized Miller’s expertise in the field and confirmed that his dismissal was due to the expression of these protected beliefs.
Miller gave a lecture in 2019 in which he identified Zionism as a pillar of Islamophobia, which prompted complaints from Jewish students and led the Community Security Trust, which campaigns against antisemitism, to call his remarks a “disgraceful slur.”
A university review found Miller had no case to answer because he did not express hatred toward Jews, but he was dismissed for gross misconduct two years later after sending an email to the university’s student newspaper.
In the email, he said, “Zionism is and always has been a racist, violent, imperialist ideology premised on ethnic cleansing” and claimed the university’s Jewish Society was tantamount to an “Israel lobby group.”
His statements were deemed offensive, leading to his eventual sacking.
However, the tribunal found that Miller’s comments were lawful and did not incite violence.
“What (Miller) said was accepted as lawful, was not antisemitic and did not incite violence and did not pose any threat to any person’s health or safety,” the tribunal decided.
Pirani found that Miller’s anti-Zionism did not equate to antisemitism or opposition to Jewish self-determination, but rather “opposition to Zionism’s realization of exclusive Jewish rights within a land that also includes a significant non-Jewish population.”
Although Miller won his case, the tribunal acknowledged that his public statements “contributed” to his dismissal, resulting in any compensation being reduced by 50 percent. The final amount will be determined in a future hearing.
Indian FM’s visit to Pakistan unlikely to thaw frosty ties, experts say
- Jaishankar has said he will not discuss bilateral relations during trip
- High-level visit may still contribute to ‘slight improvement’ in India-Pakistan ties
NEW DELHI: Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad is unlikely to thaw frosty relations between India and Pakistan as both countries struggle with domestic issues, experts said on Monday ahead of the first such trip by a high-level Indian official.
The Ministry of External Affairs confirmed last Friday that Jaishankar will be leading the Indian delegation to attend the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — a 10-member trans-regional economic and security body established by China and Russia — from Oct. 15-16 in the Pakistani capital.
Jaishankar has said he will not discuss bilateral relations during the visit.
India has fought three wars with its nuclear-armed neighbor, including two over control of the disputed Kashmir region in the Himalayas.
India controls Jammu and Kashmir, which is part of the larger Kashmiri territory that has been the subject of international dispute since the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Both countries, which claim Kashmir in full and rule in part, further downgraded their diplomatic ties in tit-for-tat moves in 2019, after India unilaterally stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its limited constitutional autonomy. In protest, Pakistan also suspended all bilateral trade.
“It (the visit) would contribute in certain ways in thawing the relationship that has been frozen for the last 10 years and may provide an opportunity for India to construct (and) begin conversation with Pakistan,” Sanjay Kapoor, analyst and political editor, told Arab News.
However, Pakistan’s political instability and security challenges are also a drawback to potential bilateral engagements, said Prof. Harsh V. Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
“Pakistan is in such a febrile (state) that who to talk to is a big question,” he told Arab News.
“The way political challenges are rising for the Pakistani government, they are quite substantive and there is no way in which a unified machinery exists … even if India wants to have a conversation with Pakistan and take that conversation forward.”
Unless “something fundamental shifts” in Islamabad concerning its approach to regional security and terrorism, Pant said that India will not be “very incentivized to engage with Pakistan.”
Cross-border terrorism was a top-of-mind issue for the Indian government, said Manish Chand, the CEO of the think tank Center for Global India Insights.
“Pakistan has not done anything tangible, concrete” to address Delhi’s concerns over the matter, he told Arab News, adding that any dialogue with Islamabad also depended on the Indian public perception and mood, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party lost its absolute majority in parliament in June.
“This government, the BJP, does not want to be seen as soft on Pakistan or cross-border terror, so they don’t want to take a political chance because that would mean that it could be they will face cracking political scrutiny,” Chand told Arab News.
Despite the challenges, Jaishankar’s trip should still be seen as a “very positive gesture” that may lead “to a slight improvement” in bilateral relations, which “may eventually lead to some tangible move leading to reengagement at some level or revival of the dialogue process,” he said.
But Prof. Siddiq Wahid, a Srinagar-based political analyst, said engaging with Pakistan was not a priority for the Indian government.
“The current Indian government is hampered by its self-image of India in the world. That self-image is of a major global player. As a result it thinks that time is on its side and it does not have to deal with Islamabad,” he told Arab News.
“Meanwhile, the regional rivalry between Delhi and Islamabad continues to fester.”
Father accused of Sara Sharif’s murder confessed to UK police, jurors told
- Sharif was found dead in August 2023 at her home in Woking, after what prosecutors say was a campaign of “serious and repeated violence”
LONDON: The father of Sara Sharif, a 10-year-old girl who was found dead in her home in Britain, told police “I beat her up too much,” prosecutors said at his murder trial on Monday.
Sharif was found dead in August 2023 at her home in Woking, a town southwest of London, after what prosecutors say was a campaign of “serious and repeated violence.”
Her father Urfan Sharif, 42, his wife and Sara Sharif’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and the girl’s uncle Faisal Malik, 29, are on trial at London’s Old Bailey court charged with her murder.
The trio are alternatively charged with causing or allowing the death of a child. All three deny the charges against them and blame each other for her death, prosecutors say.
Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones told jurors on the first day of the trial on Monday that Urfan Sharif called British police, having fled to Pakistan after Sara Sharif’s death.
“He used what you may think is an odd expression,” Emlyn Jones said. “He said: ‘I legally punished her and she died’.”
Emlyn Jones said that Urfan Sharif also told police: “I beat her up. It wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much.”
The prosecutor said a note in Urfan Sharif’s handwriting was also found next to his daughter’s body, which read: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”
Emlyn Jones told the jury that each of Urfan Sharif, Batool and Malik “played their part in the violence and mistreatment which resulted in Sara’s death.”
The three defendants all deny responsibility for any of violence and abuse and each “seeks to deflect the blame onto one or both of the others,” Emlyn Jones said.
Urfan Sharif blames his wife Batool, Emlyn Jones said, and his apparent confessions to the police were designed to “protect the true guilty party.”
The prosecutor added that Batool’s case is that Urfan Sharif was a “violent disciplinarian” and that she was scared of him, while Malik says he was unaware of any abuse or violence.
The trial is expected to run until December.
India accuses Canada of ‘deliberate’ smear campaign in latest diplomatic row
- Last year’s murder of a Sikh separatist activist in Surrey is at the center of diplomatic row
- India ‘reserves the right to take further steps’ after latest allegations, foreign ministry says
NEW DELHI: India said on Monday that the Canadian government was deliberately smearing New Delhi for political gain, after being told by Canada that its envoy and other diplomats in Ottawa were named ‘persons of interest’ in an investigation.
India and Canada have been under diplomatic strain since last September, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country was investigating “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen of Indian descent who was shot dead by masked gunmen in Surrey, British Columbia.
The Indian government rejected the allegation as “absurd” then, and the two countries expelled their senior diplomats in reciprocal moves. India also moved to suspend visa services for Canadian citizens, which have since been restored.
After over a year, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said the government received diplomatic communication from Canada on Sunday “suggesting that the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats were ‘persons of interest’”in an ongoing investigation.
“The Government of India strongly rejects these preposterous imputations and ascribes them to the political agenda of the Trudeau Government that is centered around vote bank politics,” the ministry said in a statement issued on Monday.
“This latest step follows interactions that have again witnessed assertions without any facts. This leaves little doubt that on the pretext of an investigation, there is a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains.”
The Canadian government “has not shared a shred of evidence” with New Delhi since their allegations last year, it added.
At the center of the Canadian investigation is Nijjar, who was an outspoken supporter of the Khalistan movement, which calls for a separate Sikh homeland in parts of India’s Punjab state.
The movement is outlawed in India and considered a national security threat by the government, which formally designated Nijjar as a terrorist.
He was shot dead last June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, which has a significant number of Sikh residents.
Canada is home to the world’s largest Sikh community outside India — about 770,000 people, or 2 percent of its entire population.
The Indian government said Trudeau has long been hostile to India, adding that his government “has consciously provided space to violent extremists and terrorists to harass, threaten and intimidate” Indian diplomats and community leaders in Canada.
“India now reserves the right to take further steps in response to these latest efforts of the Canadian Government to concoct allegations against Indian diplomats,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Spanish PM says ‘no withdrawal’ of UN force from Lebanon
- Spain condemns Netanyahu’s call for the force to pull back
- Sanchez affirmed his commitment to a UN Security Council resolution that bolstered the force’s role in 2006
MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday said there would be “no withdrawal” of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon after Israeli attacks and calls to leave.
Israel’s offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia has thrust the UNIFIL force deployed in Lebanon since 1978 into the spotlight.
The force, which involves about 9,500 troops from some 50 nations led by a Spanish general, has reported multiple Israeli attacks in recent days that injured five of its troops and sparked international condemnation.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on them to withdraw for their own safety and said their presence had “the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields.”
Spain condemns Netanyahu’s call for the force to pull back and “there will be no withdrawal of UNIFIL,” Sanchez told a forum in Barcelona.
Sanchez affirmed his commitment to a UN Security Council resolution that bolstered the force’s role in 2006 following the last major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.
That commitment “makes more sense today than ever after seeing what is happening on the ground,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez has been one of the most strident critics of the Netanyahu government’s war in Gaza, which was sparked by last year’s unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel.
The war has drawn in Iran-backed groups from across the region including Hezbollah, with Israel last month escalating its cross-border fire with the group and launching a ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
